The present invention relates to an auxiliary loadcarrying apparatus which may be utilized in conjunction with mobile equipment when the mobile equipment is being towed on the highway, or may be detached from the mobile equipment when the mobile equipment is being utilized in the field. The detachable auxiliary load-carrying apparatus of the present invention permits mobile equipment to be transported down the highway between job sites in compliance with state and federal weight distribution regulations (i.e., load per axle and load per axle per unit displacement between axles).
Mobile equipment, such as used in agriculture, construction, and the like, is often bulky and complicated, with weight distribution which is perfectly acceptable for utilization of the mobile equipment in the field but not acceptable when the mobile equipment is being towed on the highway. An example of such mobile equipment is mobile equipment for uprooting vegetation from the ground, disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,602,686 (fully incorporated herein by reference) and depicted in FIG. 1 herein. As shown in FIG. 1, the mobile equipment 1 includes a frame 2 with a forward end 3 and a rearward end 4 respectively provided with front and rear wheels 5 and 6 (one of each depicted in FIG. 1). A hitch 7 typically is connected to the frame 2 by means of a goose-neck portion 8 so that the mobile equipment may be towed in the field during use and on the highway between job sites.
The above-described mobile equipment for uprooting vegetation is provided with an uprooting mechanism 9, for uprooting vegetation 10, driven by a source of power 11. The vegetation uprooted by the uprooting mechanism 9 is received on the first end 12 of a soil separating mechanism 13, and moves upwardly away from the uprooting mechanism 9 towards a second end 14 of soil separating mechanism 13 and into a collecting container 15. The collecting container 15 includes hinges 16 and one or more operator controlled hydraulic rams 17 pivotably connected to the frame 2 and the collecting container 15 such that operation of the hydraulic rams 17 is controlled to periodically discharge uprooted vegetation from collecting container 15. One or more operator controlled hydraulic rams 18 extend between the forward end 3 and the rearward end 4 of the frame 2 for controllably tilting the rearward end 4 of the frame 2 relative to the forward end 3 and the ground. During operation in the field, the frame tilting hydraulic rams 18 are operated to engage uprooting mechanism 9 deeply into the soil when deeply-embedded root systems are to be removed from the ground, and to lift uprooting mechanism 9 off of the ground when the mobile equipment is being turned around between uprooting operations.
Although certain types of operator-controlled auxiliary load-carrying apparatuses are known, they tend to be unsuitable for use in conjunction with mobile field equipment such as discussed above, or unduly complicated. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,350,358 discloses an auxiliary load-carrying apparatus for a self-transit concrete mixer truck which must be permanently mounted upon the truck along with a complicated arrangement of levers, hinges and hydraulic cylinders. Other similar apparatuses require similar complicated arrangements for distributing the load between wheels.
Thus, despite the existence of auxiliary load-carrying apparatuses generally, there remains a need for such an apparatus which can be suitably utilized in conjunction with mobile field equipment, which is simple to construct and utilize, and which readily may be detached from the mobile equipment during use of the mobile equipment in the field.